Hamburger & Onions

There is little more comforting than the smell of hamburger browning with onions. One of the first recipes I learned to make is, in my heart, the quintessential comfort food: a simply, homey meal known as hamburger hotdish. It's hamburger, onions, salt and pepper, canned tomatoes (ideally homegrown and home canned, but we do the best we can with what we have), and cooked macaroni. Someone a little more adventurous might add some paprika or chili powder or cheese or peppers, but the simple basic is still the best.

I can remember coming home from piano lessons late in the fall, when it would be growing dark and chilly by the time I got to our front door. The lights would be on, and I could follow the smell of the hamburger cooking right up the front stairs to our bright and cheerful kitchen, my mother there at the stove with her back to the counter. Suppertime in our house was often messy and noisy, but there'd never been anywhere else I felt safer or more secure. I can still see Mom in the kitchen as clearly as if I'd been there yesterday. I can hear the chattering parakeet mimicking children in and out of the room: "I'm hungry!" or "What's for supper?" I can remember sitting at the counter doing homework or writing stories, watching my mother cook. The smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies or homemade buns spread with butter and brown sugar can evoke such images as well, but nothing brings the feeling of the joy of homecoming quite like hamburger and onions.

I was thinking this as I stood over my own stove the other day, my back to the counter where my oldest daughter sat copying recipes to take with her when she moves out. I'd had a yearning for old-fashioned hamburger hotdish, the kind my mother made, the kind my dad's mother made. I fanned the skillet in front of me, savoring the aroma, wondering how many hundreds of times I'd eaten that hotdish in all these years. I told my daughter some of my stories, in particular those chilly fall nights coming home from piano lessons. I couldn't have been older than ten or eleven.

All five of us sat around our supper table not very much later that evening, digging into hotdish, bread and butter, and a salad of cucumbers and onions. We seemed closer somehow, and for once, neither of the little ones tried to get up to play in the middle of the meal. I felt bonded, warmed, and right - all through simple hamburger hotdish and a brightly lit, noisy kitchen full of people I love.

It's the smell of hamburger browning with onions. There's nothing like it.